On the Hour, Every Hour

I never had a car when I was younger. Nowadays that sounds cool, like I was eco hip years ahead of the curve. But the truth is that I wanted a car very badly and would have happily driven a Ford Pinto that ran on veal cutlets if that's what had been available to me. The rare times that I was allowed to drive, I would get my mom's Pontiac 6000 LE. One of my 15-year-old friends lost a watch in that car during a night of me driving back and forth from the 24-hour Perkins, and we should have been able to find it since the alarm went off once every hour. We didn't and as long as my mom owned that car the watch would beep from somewhere in the depths of the backseat on the hour. It might sound like something that would be annoying, but you got used to it. Plus, it's not like you're supposed to be sleeping when you're driving, so it was kind of nice to have a little alert every hour. Every year the beep would get a little quieter as the battery faded. If I'd been able to find the watch, I would have put in a new battery and tucked it back away before we traded in that car.